Getting
Out There:
RoadTrip News & Views

The
Health Camp on Waco's historic traffic circle
has been family owned and operated since 1949.

A
functioning soda fountain in the Dr Pepper Museum
is a popular pit stop for road-weary travelers.

These
early Dr Pepper bottles showcase one of the more
successful stopper mechamisms. The invention in
1892 of the "crown cap" still in use
today revolutionized the bottling and distribution
of carbonated beverages.

The Health Camp

Opened in 1949, The Health Camp is a burger joint fronting
the roundabout on the old San Antonio-to-Dallas Highway, just
one parking lot away from a former Elvis Presley hangout,
the Elite Café. The Health Camp still has a walk-up
window. We had been warned that the "Healthburgers"
were just so-so, but the shakes were said to be stupendous.

My cheeseburger meets expectations, but the fries I order
are tasty. Tamara's onion rings are wonderful. She orders
a butterscotch milkshake; I order the chocolate. Health Camp
milkshakes come with spoons, and it's a good thing -- they're
too thick to easily drink through a straw.

Fortified, we retrace our steps north on the interstate, hang
a U-turn at the river and drive west into Waco's largely deserted
downtown district.

The King of Beverages

When I was a kid, "coke" was slang for any soft
drink. The widespread acceptance of the brand name for the
generic product was an empty victory for Coca-Cola, though,
as their cola-flavored soda was never what I was after.

I am a Dr Pepper fanatic. I don't believe Mr. Pibb is the
same beverage, or even a remotely acceptable stand-in. I once
spent an entire afternoon searching Bavarian convenience stores
and supermarkets for a six-pack of the soda, and when Jelly
Belly introduced a Dr Pepper-flavored jelly bean, I wrote
an enthusiastic letter of endorsement to the Herman Goelitz
candy company.

The British company Cadbury Schweppes now owns the Dr Pepper
brand, but Waco is its birthplace. A museum pays it homage
in the 1906 Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company building
at 300 S. 5th Street.

The building was donated by the Dr Pepper Company
as part of a downtown revitalization project in the late 1980s,
and now is owned by the W.
W. Clements Free Enterprise Institute. The institute's
stated goal is to use the Dr Pepper success story to educate
visitors about the economic system that underlies American
life. The target audience is schoolchildren.

Tamara and I linger at the ticket counter, just
beyond the gift shop and soda fountain inside the building.
After waiting several minutes, we shrug at each other and
stroll into the first display. Already the museum's mission
is successful: By being enterprising, we have gained admittance
for free.

The exhibit is a re-creation of Wade Morrison's
Old Corner Drug Store, where a young pharmacist named Charles
Alderton first served Dr Pepper in 1885. Alderton said he
was trying to recreate, in the flavor of Dr Pepper, that heady
aroma of spice and berry flavors that greeted customers when
they came through the soda fountain door. His marvelous concoction
of 23 secret flavors quickly gained a following, and soon
shouts of "Shoot me a 'Waco'" -- as the recipe was
then called -- rang through soda fountains throughout the
city.

With displays on three floors, the Dr Pepper
Museum offers enough antique bottling equipment, glass bottles
and advertising materials to satisfy even my fanatical interest.
Plus, the gift shop is stacked high with cases of Dr Pepper.
Not just any Dr Pepper, either -- Dublin
Dr Pepper. In Texas, Dublin Dr Pepper has an almost religious
mystique. The little bottling plant, located 90 miles north
and a bit west of Waco, was the first to bottle the soda fountain
recipe and the only bottler never to switch to corn sweeteners.
It's made today with Imperial pure cane sugar -- another native
Texas brand -- just as it was in 1891.

At the soda fountain, Tamara and I order ginger
ale; it's the only place in the world that "Circle A"
ginger ale is still served. The brand was popular more than
a century ago, eventually becoming the official ginger ale
of the U.S. Armed Forces.

As we sit at one of the tables scattered across
the black-and-white tiled floor, a family of six walks in.
We listen to their conversation. They are refugees from the
teeming interstate who have followed the signs to the soda
fountain, seeking refreshment.

Waco is itself refreshing -- a step back to a
simpler time: an era of stark certainty, enterprising business
and unapologetic wholesomeness.